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At this months meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club the members were busy working out their club display for the Scottish National Exhibition, which will be held in Stirling this coming Saturday. As usual, their display will be in 2 parts, with larger trees on one side and shohin trees on the other. Here are a few photographs from my visit.

On Wednesday evening I was invited to the garden of a friend, Peter Thorne, to see his bonsai collection. Peter is an active member of the Ayrshire group and each Wednesday during the summer he invites fellow club members along to the shed at the bottom of his garden, to work on their trees. This week 8 members turned up including myself so workspace in the shed was at a premium.

Here are some photographs of some of the trees on Peters benches, which I managed to take before it got too dark.

Large Yew with a good nebari and interesting deadwood

European Hornbeam

2 blue cedars and a Chinese juniper. the one in the centre is a stunning tree

Here are other pictures of the blue cedar and the large yew that I took at the Gardening Scotland Show last month.

Yesterday I attended the monthly meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club at Wattston Bonsai. It was a busy day with lots of people passing through the workshop. Some of the members were involved in a number of seasonal tasks including defoliation of deciduous species and the re-potting of trees that respond better to this process when the weather is a little warmer.Here are a few pictures that sum up the day.

Yesterday I travelled north to the city of Stirling for the Scottish Bonsai Associations annual show. This is the yearly gathering for all the affiliated bonsai clubs in Scotland. This show changes it’s venue every 2 years to ensure that as many people as possible get an opportunity to see good bonsai without travelling great distances. I set off at 06.00 am (which is the middle of the night for me these days), arriving at the venue just before 08.00′ to set up our club display stand. It was a terrific day with all the nations’ clubs and bonsai traders represented to ensure the events’ success.

I am delighted to say that our club did rather well in the competitive part of the event, taking 6 out of the 7 awards that were given.

Here is a gallery of detailed pictures of our club shohin displays (The Lanarkshire Bonsai Club). Click on any image to see a larger image in gallery mode.

Much of the time at yesterdays meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club was taken up with the selection of trees for our club display at the Scottish National Bonsai Show which this year will be held in Stirling on Saturday the 14th of May ( See flyer at the end of this post).Here are some photographs taken during our deliberations, which give a very rough impression of what we are planning. Its difficult to judge the impact the display will have in the club setting without the benefit of the backdrops, the covered tables, accents etc.

Robert Porch has obviously been spending too much time in Northern Ireland with Philip recently.

It was a busy day yesterday at Wattston Bonsai for the April meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club. The weather was kind, which meant that a good number of members attended to catch up on the news, work on their trees and stock up on supplies for the new season. Here are some pictures from the day.

Maurice, the club’s representative at the Scottish Bonsai Association, getting ready for an announcement.

Totally focussed on their trees

Dougie advising Gavin on the styling of a Juniper with Murray looking on.